Zone Conference!

Shout out to my family that I just got to skype, it was super great to see you all!! I am so incredibly grateful for families; I seriously don’t know where I would be if I didn’t have them and their love and support!

We had a couple of miracles this week which were such tender mercies! We have been super struggling to find new investigators for the past little while, but we were able to schedule some new people this week and while some of them didn’t show up 😦 we still were able to meet with a couple of new people!

We also tried to do some more less-active finding but ended up in the middle of nowhere as we were trying to find the right villages and houses. It’s always an adventure in missionary work, that’s for sure!

This week we had zone conference and it was so good! I always am able to learn so much from President Lam and the other missionaries. The leaders in our zone also put on a training for conference that we have been working on for a while, and it turned out really well! We had a “Harry Potter” theme and talked about being miracle seekers as we go about doing our missionary work. I was Professor McGonagal (of course) which was also pretty fun. It was a good reminder for me to keep looking for miracles throughout the week, and to also be preparing myself throughout the week so that I will be able to recognize these opportunities when they come. Just like the snitch, these opportunities are sometimes small and hard to see and we have to constantly be diligent and prepared or we will miss them. It is also important to realize that most of the miracles that we see won’t be big or brilliant, but they will be small and simple things, the accumulation of which can have a big impact on others.

One of them was that girl named Faith that I talked about a little while ago that we met while walking on the street. She showed up to the church and we were able to show her around for the first time and then taught her the restoration. She listened really well and had some really cool experiences that she shared with us about how she started to believe in God. It was a really good lesson, but to top it all off we had a Relief Society activity afterwards that she was able to come to and meet a lot of members! It sounds like her husband isn’t very supportive of her meeting with us so we might encounter some roadblocks, but I know that all things work out for the good of those who put their trust in God!

We also were able to meet with a former investigator that neither of us had ever met with before, who was also slightly notorious for cancelling or not showing up. But he did! And even though missionaries had actually worked with him quite a bit in the past, this was his first time to actually come to the church building so we were able to give him a church tour as well! He is hesitant to come to church meetings on Sundays, but he has a pretty strong desire to learn more about the restoration and Book of Mormon, which I’m sure will lead him in the right direction.

So happy that we were able to teach some more lessons this week and that we even had some more of our investigators come to the RS activity yaya!

There was another lady that we met in McDonald’s (also our first time seeing her) and as we were talking to her, I just felt so bad for her. She was older and divorced and living with her son, who didn’t treat her very well, and was overall just not in a very good position. Her expression seemed stone cold as she talked about her worries, and never once the entire time we met with her did her face ever crack into something that even resembled a smile. She was filled with sadness, but there was also a lot of bitterness mixed in with it that you could see was slowly consuming her. As we taught and bore testimony about our Savior Jesus Christ and his ability to help and heal us she seemed almost disbelieving that she could be helped. I started thinking about how in each of our trials, we can either let ourselves be consumed with anger and bitterness, or we can allow ourselves to be enveloped in the healing love and light of Christ. Trials are never easy, because of course if they were then there wouldn’t be much point to them, now would there? But if we handle them correctly and remember to call upon the strength of our perfect Redeemer instead of becoming discouraged by our own failed attempts to overcome, then these trials can become a source of strength for us. I wouldn’t trade the trials that I’ve had for anything because of all that I was able to learn from them. I hope that none of us becomes resentful or discouraged in our times of difficulty, but that we will instead choose to look up and take ahold of the love of our Savior by relying on him, and through earnest prayer use the atonement which He has provided for us.

Let your family know you love them!! Let your trials be an opportunity to grow and become stronger–when God gives you bigger challenges it means that he knows you can handle it!